I'm happy with the response I got. However, my issue was not resolved.

I have no idea how to get Spiceworks to stop adding duplicate machines to my inventory when it does its network scan.

* I do not have any overlapping ranges in my scan settings.

* I have disabled incremental scan

* I have enabled: "Resolve all addresses to names"

* My DNS is clean.

* I have tried to completely delete the original and duplicate machines.

* The machines all have one network card.

* The duplicate and original machines both end up with the same IP address and host name.

* Spiceworks adds entries automatically to the network scan settings for each machine on the network. (whether a particular machine is duplicated or not) I assume this is normal behavior.

This seems to have something to do with the machines being off during a network scan. If Spiceworks can't connect to a machine, it adds it as a duplicate and sets the serial number to the IP address (apparently from the DNS cache).

It would be great if Spiceworks would check things like the host name and IP (but most importantly the host name) and just not add duplicates to the inventory. I can't think of a (basic) scenario where host names might move around, be reused, or actually exist in multiple instances in a typical network.

I realize that this problem is not universal, or everybody would be complaining. Whatever the reason is in my case, I simply cannot use this product without disabling network scan....which is one of the core features that I enjoy. I've invested several days setting this thing up, and am about to scrap it.

So far with the new installation everything is going ok. I'm noticing that spiceworks isn't creating a bunch of entries in the network scan setup for me. I mentioned this in my posts on this topic, and I assumed it was default behavior. Now I'm thinking that this might have been the cause of my problems.

Spiceworks was configured to scan the range 10.0.0.1-254 and then it added a bunch of entries for machines it had found, which also happen to be in that range. I don't know why it did this. It could have been the issue with the bad username on my initial scan. It technically shouldn't be an issue because lower items on the list are given priority. Anyhow, perhaps this has something to do with it because overlapping scan ranges are supposedly problematic.

This time I manually configured my scan settings down to the last detail (all of my various devices are in separate IP ranges in the submet...like switches, printers, workstations, etc...so it was easy enough to do).

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It sounds like there are two ends to this problem, the Spiceworks end and the device's end. It sounds like you've got Spiceworks setup properly, so maybe we can address the problem from the device (or at least rule out this being a device problem).

What are the similarities between the duplicate devices? All in the same group? All have the same NIC card? All are on the same VLAN? All use the same account settings in Spiceworks? Any correlation could help figure out the source of the problem.

If those questions are difficult to answer, what about the larger group, the devices that aren't experiencing the problem? How are this group of devices similar, how are the two groups difference?

All of the machines are on the same subnet in the same domain. The same Windows account is used for all machines.

I'm not seeing much in common with the machines that have given me trouble here. Intel PRO/100 VE, RTL8139, RTL8169, Via Rhine, nForce network cards. Via, nVidia, and Intel chipsets. They're not even all the same make. Most of them are Systemax, one is Dell, one is whitebox.

The duplicates are in and added to the Workstations (Spiceworks default) group, and also end up in my AD group (the one that Spiceworks creates). However in one instance a machine is duplicated into Unknowns, and in another case a server is duplicated into Workstations.

The only thing that these machines all seem to have in common is that they are *OFF* when Spiceworks "finds" them and adds them to the inventory as duplicates.

A couple days ago I had a ticket that moved from one machine to another. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me.

Now I've got machines disappearing and their specs being added to other machines.... so what's probably really happening is that a machine is being renamed over an existing machine.

Ok this is nuts. I haven't done anything weird. I installed Spiceworks and then filled in information about my machines as they were discovered. This domain isn't anything exciting; standard Windows 2003 server.

I may uninstall and reinstall... and if that doesn't work, to heck with it.

I believe this is where a Spiceworks rep will need to take over because I'm at a loss! I'm sorry I couldn't be of more use, but perhaps someone else will see our dialog and it will help them troubleshoot the issue quicker. I'd be hesitant to try uninstall/reinstall just because I'd be really disappointed to go through the hassle and have it not work without first talking with a Spiceworks rep.

When I first ran Spiceworks, I entered my primary Windows account incorrectly (didn't include the domain), and the initial scan found everything but couldn't login to anything. I fixed it after performing my first scan. This could have had some unknown impact.

I'm also wondering if the AD integration doesn't have something to do with the problem. Perhaps if I delete the AD groups that it adds automatically it can help?

Regardless, I don't have much hope. I'll spend a few more hours before giving up.

When I run wmic systemenclosure get serialnumber on pretty much any machine, the output is blank. No errors, it just says SerialNumber.

WMI is working and Spiceworks is pulling information. I'm just wondering if the lack of a configured serialnumber is a clue here since all of the support documents talk about grabbing the serialnumber to test WMI.

No, there doesn't seem to be a connection there. Most of the machines end up with their hostnames as serialnumbers. Interestingly enough, in my previous installation they all ended up with IP addresses for serialnumbers. Anyhow, one of the machines that does report a serial number was one that I had duplicate trouble with.

So far with the new installation everything is going ok. I'm noticing that spiceworks isn't creating a bunch of entries in the network scan setup for me. I mentioned this in my posts on this topic, and I assumed it was default behavior. Now I'm thinking that this might have been the cause of my problems.

Spiceworks was configured to scan the range 10.0.0.1-254 and then it added a bunch of entries for machines it had found, which also happen to be in that range. I don't know why it did this. It could have been the issue with the bad username on my initial scan. It technically shouldn't be an issue because lower items on the list are given priority. Anyhow, perhaps this has something to do with it because overlapping scan ranges are supposedly problematic.

This time I manually configured my scan settings down to the last detail (all of my various devices are in separate IP ranges in the submet...like switches, printers, workstations, etc...so it was easy enough to do).

It working so far. Fingers crossed.

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